Browsing Posts tagged Dairy farming

—Our thanks to Gene Baur and Farm Sanctuary for permission to republish this post, which first appeared on the Farm Sanctuary Blog on February 28, 2014.

For 20 years, the U.S. dairy industry asked consumers, “Got Milk?” Despite the industry’s highly visible marketing campaigns and huge government subsidies, today many consumers are saying, “No, thanks.” With milk consumption on the decline in the United States, the industry’s marketing branch, the Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP), has launched a new slogan: “Milk Life.”

The “Milk Life” campaign seeks to promote dairy as fuel for an active lifestyle. Using images of ordinary people performing athletic and energetic feats with the declaration, “What eight grams of protein looks like,” “Milk Life” is portrayed as fun, active, and family-friendly. But when we view these ads featuring, for instance, a young girl jumping into a pool, propelled by wings made of milk, let’s ask ourselves: what does “Milk Life” mean for a cow?

The confident and carefree lives of the everyday people shown in these new ads take on a dark hue when compared with the existence of the everyday dairy cow who is pushed to her biological limit, commonly producing ten times more milk than she would naturally. Dairy cows don’t get to run freely and explore outside, although they would love to. Cows are naturally playful, curious, and energetic, but in the dairy industry they are confined, frustrated and exploited.

In order to maximize milk production, cows are subjected to a relentless cycle of impregnation, birth, lactation, and re-impregnation. I’ve been to dairy farms and seen babies taken from their mothers within hours of their births, which is standard practice. I’ve seen thousands of those lonely, frightened calves confined in wooden boxes, while their mothers are hooked up to milking machines. Cows are social animals who form close bonds with friends and family members, yet most mothers and calves in the dairy do not get to spend even a day together. Mothers are heartlessly separated from every baby they bear. Young female calves are raised to replace their worn-out mothers. The males are commonly sold for veal or beef. continue reading…

by Lorraine Murray
–See second update below: December 2013
–Update: November 2013

Two months ago, Advocacy for Animalspublished the following report on a controversial badger “cull” that the UK government had recently embarked upon in two English counties and the questionable rationales behind it. We joined critics such as The Badger Trust in making the case that the enterprise would be of dubious efficacy and of unnecessary cruelty as a method of curtailing bovine tuberculosis infections among cattle. This was called a “cull”, that word apparently intended to imply a certain deliberate and measured quality, rather than the ineptitude that which has actually turned out to be the case. The pilot program was to have lasted six weeks—that is, into mid-October—but the cattle farmers have recently asked the government for an eight-week extension, because killing quotas have not yet been met.

It seems that the parties responsible for reducing the badger population by 70% in

the pilot areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset did not actually realize that the badgers—who are shy, burrowing creatures—might hide at unfamiliar sounds and scents, such as the approach of marksmen and the sound of gunshots. This has resulted in officials having made a number of public excuses, most notably that of Owen Paterson, Britain’s secretary of state for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. He was asked in early October, given his assertion that the badger cull had been a success despite the evidence, whether he was in fact moving the goalposts regarding the criteria determining the cull’s success:

The badgers moved the goalposts. Wily badgers, outsmarting the British government!

UPDATE, December 5, 2013. The Gloucestershire badger cull, which had been extended until December 18, has been called off, effective November 30. The shooters failed to meet even the lower target quota, which was reduced from 70% of the badger population in the pilot region to 58%.

Herewith, our original piece from September.

****

In the last week of August, the British government began a six-week “pilot cull” of badgers in several areas of the countryside, employing marksmen to shoot and kill some 5,000 badgers (Meles meles) as part of a program to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB). For security reasons, the precise locations of the shoots have not been disclosed; generally speaking, however, they are taking place in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset in England.

What do badgers have to do with tuberculosis and its spread to cattle? Will the culls be effective? How is this being justified? –These are all important questions. Bovine tuberculosis is a serious health concern for Britain’s dairy farmers, and a costly one; in 2011, for example, 34,000 cattle with bTB were slaughtered. According to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the cost of bTB to taxpayers in 2012 was 100 million pounds.

European badgers are also susceptible to tuberculosis. In fact, the disease is one of the leading causes of natural death in the species. Badgers have been identified as one of the culprits in the spread of TB to cattle, through their contamination of feeding areas and possibly their spreading of the infectious bacterium through the air. Farmers and some (but not all) scientists believe that culling some 70 percent of the badgers in a high-risk zone is an important part of an anti-bTB strategy. Culls have taken place in Britain before, including an experimental program in the early 2000s whose results were analyzed scientifically. The Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), as it was called, yielded mixed conclusions; initially, it seemed that disturbance of the badger populations in their home territories led them to spread out—and spread TB—to new areas, and new TB infections were observed to spike in cattle herds in a ring around the culled area. Some interpreters say, however, that the ongoing study of the aftermath of the RBCT showed that the rise in infections did not continue in the following years.

Yet the efficacy of culling badger populations is debated among reputable scientists. When the issue reared its head previously in 2012, a group of scientists specializing in wildlife diseases and wildlife management stated to the government their belief that “the complexities of tuberculosis transmission mean licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it.” continue reading…

In the last week of August, the British government began a controversial six-week “pilot cull” of badgers in several areas of the countryside, employing marksmen to shoot and kill some 5,000 badgers (Meles meles) as part of a program to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB).

For security reasons, the precise locations of the shoots have not been disclosed; generally speaking, however, they are taking place in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset in England.

What do badgers have to do with tuberculosis and its spread to cattle? Will the culls be effective? How is this being justified? –These are all important questions. Bovine tuberculosis is a serious health concern for Britain’s dairy farmers, and a costly one; in 2011, for example, 34,000 cattle with bTB were slaughtered. According to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the cost of bTB to taxpayers in 2012 was 100 million pounds.

European badgers are also susceptible to tuberculosis. In fact, the disease is one of the leading causes of natural death in the species. Badgers have been identified as one of the culprits in the spread of TB to cattle, through their contamination of feeding areas and possibly their spreading of the infectious bacterium through the air. Farmers and some (but not all) scientists believe that culling some 70 percent of the badgers in a high-risk zone is an important part of an anti-bTB strategy. Culls have taken place in Britain before, including an experimental program in the early 2000s whose results were analyzed scientifically. The Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), as it was called, yielded mixed conclusions; initially, it seemed that disturbance of the badger populations in their home territories led them to spread out—and spread TB—to new areas, and new TB infections were observed to spike in cattle herds in a ring around the culled area. Some interpreters say, however, that the ongoing study of the aftermath of the RBCT showed that the rise in infections did not continue in the following years.

Yet the efficacy of culling badger populations is debated among reputable scientists. When the issue reared its head previously in 2012, a group of scientists specializing in wildlife diseases and wildlife management stated to the government their belief that “the complexities of tuberculosis transmission mean licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it.” continue reading…

— Our thanks to Maneka Gandhi for permission to republish this post, which originally appeared on the Web site of People for Animals, India’s largest animal welfare organization, on September 27, 2012.

Mark Bittman is a food columnist with the New York Times. He suffered from hyperacidity and took pills most of his life. Recently he was told by a friend to stop drinking milk or any of its forms—curd, cheese etc. He did, and four months later not only had his acidity disappeared but most of his other health problems vanished as well.

He wrote a column on it for the paper. Thirteen hundred people wrote to the paper the next day saying that they had had similar experiences. “In them, people outlined their experiences with dairy and health problems as varied as heartburn, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, eczema, acne, hives, asthma (‘When I gave up dairy, my asthma went away completely’), gall bladder issues, body aches, ear infections, colic, ‘seasonal allergies,’ rhinitis, chronic sinus infections and more. One writer mentioned an absence of canker sores after cutting out dairy; I realized I hadn’t had a canker sore—which I’ve gotten an average of once a month my whole life—in four months.”

Doctors and the medical establishment are the last people to consult about milk. While they will admit that many people are lactose–intolerant—meaning they are allergic to milk and will suffer digestive problems if they drink it—they will confine this to 1 percent of the population. But they refuse to study the links between dairy and such a broad range of ailments.

If you go to a doctor with an acidity problem (or heartburn, as it is known) the gastroenterologist will prescribe a proton pump inhibitor, or PPI, a drug that blocks the production of acid in the stomach. But PPIs don’t address underlying problems, nor are they “cures.” They address only the symptom, not its cause, and they are only effective while the user takes them.

Most of these heartburn cases have a story to tell of how they solved their problems by eliminating dairy. Hundreds of people wrote in to Bittman saying that they stopped drinking milk by accident—a vacation where milk was not available or they were with non-milk-drinking friends or family—and their symptoms disappeared, only to return when they started their “normal” diet again. continue reading…

The Monster in Our Midst

— Our thanks to Animal Blawg for permission to republish this post, which originally appeared on that site on June 12, 2012.

Given the opportunity, what would you say to a couple hundred high school students about animal exploitation? In 30 minutes? I had that chance as a speaker at a Missoula, Montana high school in April.

Click on image---courtesy Animal Blawg.

Having taught there several years ago, I already knew that kids at this school are generally awesome and take pride in their open-minded, “alternative” image. Still, I was clued in by a few that the animal rights viewpoint isn’t any more warmly embraced there than it is in the rest of society. Go figure.

Earth Day was the occasion, so I chose factory farming for my topic—its gross cruelty to animals, its devastating impacts on the environment and humans. I set about creating a PowerPoint to engage teenagers, saying what I had to say in 50 minutes, then painfully, laboriously cutting out 20 of those minutes. First and foremost, I wanted to convey the position of normalcy that animal exploitation occupies in the status quo and, consequently, in our lives—to let kids off the hook, in a sense, for not knowing or not noticing (a defensive audience being much less likely to hear the message). There was no reference to vegetarian (except for Paul McCartney’s “glass walls” quote) or vegan, no pressure or proselytizing. I started with a question:

Why are we so thoroughly unaware of the animal exploitation that surrounds and supports our lives?

We are kept ignorant by design, I suggested. Industrial animal production is intentionally hidden from view (“If slaughterhouses had glass walls …”). Then, too, it’s an integral part of our economy what with its taxpayer subsidies, powerful lobbies, beneficial laws, and lax regulation. Want more? The end product is cheap and heavily marketed (here, familiar fast food logos crowd onto the screen, one after another—Do you remember a time when you didn’t recognize these?!?). Finally, it’s embedded in our most enduring traditions and family memories. Here the Easter ham appears, supplanted by the Fourth of July hotdog and the Thanksgiving turkey. Last image up: a plate of cookies, a tall glass of milk, and Santa’s red-gloved hand poised for the dunk. Yes, the jolly elf himself’s got milk. continue reading…

"Service Animal" Scammers (New Yorker): An increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being.

Why London’s pig café pop-up is a terrible idea for pigs: Teacup pigs are adorable. Unfortunately, they’re also a complete fabrication. But that isn’t stopping a local London specialty breeder and Yelp from putting on an adoption event to educate the public on “proper” micro pig care.